The Mongols are strangers to every kind of industry. Some felt carpets, some rudely tanned hides, a little needlework and embroidery, are exceptions not deserving of mention. On the other hand, they possess to perfection the qualities of a pastoral and nomad people. They have the senses of sight, hearing, and scent prodigiously developed. The Mongol is able to hear at a very long distance the trot of a horse, to distinguish the form of objects, and to detect the distant scent of flocks, and the smoke of an encampment.
Many attempts have already been made to propagate Christianity among the Tartars, and we may say that they have not been altogether fruitless. Towards the end of the eighth century and in the commencement of the ninth, Timothy, patriarch of the Nestorians, sent some monks to preach the Gospel to the Hioung-Nou Tartars, who had taken refuge on the shores of the Caspian Sea. At a later period they penetrated into Central Asia, and into China. In the time of Tchinggiskhan and his successors, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were dispatched to Tartary. The conversions were numerous; even princes, it is said, and emperors were baptized. But we must not entirely credit the statements of the Tartar ambassadors, who, the more easily to draw the Christian princes of Europe into a league against the Moslems, never failed to state that their masters had been baptized, and had made profession of Christianity. It is certain, however, that at the commencement of the fourteenth century, Pope Clement V. erected at Peking an archbishopric, in favour of Jean de Montcorvin, a Franciscan missionary who preached the Gospel to the Tartars for forty-two years; he translated into the Mongol language the New Testament and the Psalms of David, and left at his death a very flourishing Christendom. We find on this subject some curious details in “Le Livre de l’Estat du Grant Caan” { 259} (The book of the State of the Grand Khan), extracted from a manuscript of the National Library, and published in the “Nouveau Journal Asiatique” (vol. vi.), by M. Jacquet, a learned orientalist. We conceive that it may be acceptable to quote a few passages from this production.
OF THE MINORITES WHO DWELL IN THIS COUNTRY OF CATHAY (CHINA).